Winding Down for the Evening

I'm about to call it a night but wanted to update before I did. I did the first workout of the second week (6 week program) at 9 and got done about 10:30 with the cooldown. Night workouts are a rarity for me because I usually bail if it gets too late and I'm tired and make excuses. We had a "snow day" today and my son was home which makes working out hard plus I took a nap when he did because of feeling crummy. My point that is sort of getting lost in the minutia is I WORKED OUT and I am proud of myself. It has not been easy since school started and especially now that I have started my first clinical rotation of the semester, doing pediatric nutrition at the local children's hospital. I've only done one day but so far so good and I am looking forward to tomorrow.
We have eaten the turkey meatballs marsala and the bbq chicken hash dinners so far. The turkey meatball marsala dish came out tasty but I screwed up the directions practically the whole way through and the sauce was not plentiful enough to cover the noodles, ah well it was delicious. The chicken hash was a time intensive disaster tonight because I didn't read that the chicken needed to be roasted ahead of time so we had to do that and then put everything together and then cook that. If I had the chicken done it would have taken about twenty minutes tops. It was good but not stellar, I give it a B+.
I gotta get my face washed and hit the sack, tomorrow is a new day and a long one.

Bleary and Early Share Many Letters

Wow am I super tired today, hopefully this will pass once I get moving a bit more but right now I am regretting the caffeinated beverage I had late afternoon yesterday. I didn't drop off to sleep until after midnight and with getting up at 5:30, that is just not much sleep. I have a long day of lectures ahead of me, 8:30-4:45 to be exact and when you are sitting and listening all day it really wears you out oddly enough. Add in traffic time and that puts me at 7:15-6ish for the day, ack!
Hmm I'm actually feeling ok now that the fog is lifting off my brain. Feeling the soreness this morning from yesterdays workout, so far mainly lats, triceps and quads have spoken up. I got my menu made up for the week, from what I can remember it includes BBQ chicken hash, curried venison steak, turkey meatballs marsala, and chicken scallopini. We ended up with more leftovers than anticipated this past week so that should cover us until Saturday at least.
We are finally getting our bedroom redecorated and it is looking awesome, when I came to bed last night I kept peeking and smiling once my eyes were adjusted to the dark. I'll take pictures soon. Only thing really missing is painting and finding the right tables for one side of the bed and by the armchair.
Ok now that I've bored the world with talking about my furniture needs, I better get cracking on readying myself for the day.

Week 1 KB Body completed!

So I did the third workout today despite not really having the get up and go. My left buttal region (to borrown a Marn phrase) started hurting almost immediately so that sort of put a dampner on it but I did it anyway. This workout was cardio focused so it was made up of supersets with two armed swings in between each superset, followed by some core exercises (I also did the cool down of course). I only did two circuits because of the buttal injury but I think I could have done 3, so that is already improvement. I found a website with some funky swim caps so I think I'll be trying to add swimming in on my off KB days perhaps, get some use out of the gym membership I signed up for (3 yr contract) and have not been using because they don't have kettlebells, bah.
Cooked pizza from scratch last night and I was so proud of myself I could not stop saying, "I am so proud of myself!" haha. The whole wheat crust was from Cooking Light and it was sort of a disaster but it turned out tasty despite the issues that came up. The dough kept clinging to my hands despite adding a lot more flour to it than the recipe even said and it was really pissing me off. I know if your hands are warm that can be a problem, I kept running them under cold water. I finally got it in a bowl but might not have kneaded it enough since it was making me mad, and it did rise and I punched it back down. It was still really sticky though and trying to roll it out made me scream. The recipe was supposed to make two twelve inch pies but I made one big misshapen one. I topped it with sauce I made of tomatoes, garlic, basil and parsley, and shallots cooked down, a four cheese 2% fat Italian mix and sweet Italian turkey sausage, maybe 1 and a half links total. It turned out delicious but the crust of course grew really big and crazy and I had a hard time cooking it through without burning the top. All in all it was very, very tasty and I added a big romaine/tomato salad to mine and our son's plates.
I just contacted a CSA here and am hoping to get a membership and get really creative with vegetables, locally grown, organic vegetables. Awesome.
My muscles hurt.

Early Bird

I'm still here!
School started in case you couldn't tell and though I've still been getting on this machine to read things, actually producing words of my own has definitely fallen by the wayside. In fact I can't stay long today either, I want to get my workout in before I head off to class. So in bullet points:

• I did my first workout with the KB program Husband bought for me for Christmas, and I loved it! At first the system looked too complicated to me but it isn't at all now that I got off my duff and sorted it out. Monday was a strength focused workout, today will be cardio I think (maybe core? have to check) and then Friday will be whichever today isn't. (if that made any sense.)
• I am successfully getting up at 5:30am now though I faltered over the weekend. I want to do it everyday so that I naturally adjust to the pattern, so far so good. My master plan is to get used to it and then be able to workout every single day, but as for now I'm just letting my body take in the fact that yes, I really am getting up that early now. In the past I've jumped into everything at once and did not sustain it.
• I've been cooking again. Not that I stopped preparing food for awhile but I would say I was assembling more than cooking. I've made roasted red pepper couscous with balsalmic glazed porkchops, sweet and spicy turnips, fettucine with chicken, sun dried tomatoes, fresh basil, and a white wine cream sauce (with parmesan), and tonight I will make a barley, chickpea salad with artichoke hearts, garlic and pesto. All recipes from a Cooking Light book I've had for ages and barely used. If I get time I'll talk about each.
• I planned the week's menu including dinner, lunches and snacks and despite thinking it would be a huge pain in the ass, it was not so bad. I AM trained to do this after all, but even with training it's not been my favorite thing in the world. I will just develop the skill some more.

Enough yapping, I better get moving if I want to workout, get ready for school and not be stressed out getting there like I was yesterday.

Exercise has not been accomplished since Sunday but the day is not over and if it ends without me deliberately moving my ass I won't beat myself up-food is on the upswing. It only took a few days for me to stop eating mindfully without putting a lot of effort towards it, so today the effort has returned. I don't feel hungry as easily, I get full faster (or at least process the feeling) and the textures and flavors in my food seem so much richer. I now know this is how I want to live my life, not counting points, or charting calories, or examining macro nutrients intensely. If that is what works for others and they don't mind living their life that way FOR ETERNITY that is fine. I know it is just a groovy part of life for plenty of people but it really caused me to burn out after doing it for the last several years. Finding a good balance between rest and workouts is my current issue to work on, added to by remembering to eat mindfully. I really do make good choices when I am involved in the process instead of acting like a human hoover, shoveling it down the hatch as quickly as possible.
Today I have eaten weight control oatmeal because I am trying to finish the box and it just sounded good, added a mini box of raisins and drank my cup and a half of coffee. It's Yuban brand, a coffee growing co-op (smaller op) and I think it's cool to try and help out the smaller people instead of fueling the larger corporations. Not that I do this consistently but hey, the coffee is pretty darned good. Anyway, then for lunch I had a salad with: roasted cauliflower, broccoli, and yellow squash, grilled leeks, a sprinkle of walnuts and low fat feta cheese, olives, and a homemade dressing of a touch of olive oil, lemon juice and balsamic vinegar. It was good and I thought it would be a filler to lessen the taco soup portion to follow but it ended up being plenty on it's own. I just ate the taco soup (more like a chili, not very soupy) and I am completely stuffed because I slowed down and thought about it the whole time and took pauses. Yesterday I ate a little bit more of it even as a portion and when I finished eating it quickly and without thought I sat there deliberating over whether I should go get more.
Last week's vegetable of the week was leeks, which I grilled as I mentioned above, and this week it is cabbage. I'm trying to find a recipe that really appeals to me online but so far nothing is just knocking my socks off, if there's anyone out there and you want to share one, please do.
Each day is a challenge, luckily I am up for it.